“Cuban dancers and the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, founded by Alicia Alonso, are known all over the world. … Here & Now’‘s Meghna Chakrabarti spoke with José Manuel Carreño, a Cuban-born former principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater, who is now artistic director of Silicon Valley Ballet.” (audio)
Author: Matthew Westphal
NY City Ballet Principal Who First Danced With The Company At Age 9 Is Retiring
Jennie Somogyi, now 37, made her debut as Marie in Nutcracker and went on to spend 21 years as a grown-up company member – despite several major injuries that sidelined her for months at a time.
Now A Major Orchestra Is Trying A Pay-What-You-Think-It’s-Worth Night
“[The program] ‘Priceless Classics’ on 6 September will see the [Hallé] Orchestra play 10 short pieces at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. Holders of pre-booked free tickets will then be able to pay whatever they think the event was worth.”
How Hard Is It To Translate Japanese Fiction Into English? Haruki Murakami’s Translator Will Tell You
Jay Rubin: “You don’t have a grammatical structure that you can use in any way, when translating Japanese to English. You don’t have cognates. You certainly don’t have a sentence structure that’s anything like English.” Not to mention the intangibles in each language that don’t exist in the other. “I very often feel I’m writing original – almost original – fiction.”
Australia’s Arts Funding Body, Faced With Huge Budget Cuts, Reduces Its Major Grantmaking By Half
“Instead of the regular four annual funding rounds, the Australia Council will only run two grant rounds in 2015-16, one in September 2015 and one in February 2016. These two funding rounds will distribute $12 million of grants.”
Who’s Supposed To Help Replace All The Arts Funding That Australia’s Cutting? The Big Arts Companies (?)
“Major arts companies will be expected to help dig smaller companies and artists out of the $105 million hole the federal Arts Minister George Brandis has left in the Australia Council budget – at least in [the state of] Victoria, says its Minister for Creative Industries, Martin Foley.”
What It’s Like To Go Through A Psychotic Break: A First-Person Account
“I am thinking fast; new fears flood in at the speed of perception. I’m noticing some things you – the interviewing doctors – do not. Yes hallucinations, some of them; fight or flight is also heightening my senses. Paranoid hypotheses are disproved and discarded, others take their place. Some will stay with me for months to come. But I don’t know that there is any future. … The thought, ‘I’m experiencing psychosis’ – terrifying when it comes – is unavailable; it’s all too new for that.”
Battles, Batman, And Liberace: A Cultural History Of Capes
“Simple in design, yet evocative of the utmost drama and intrigue, capes are sartorial shorthand for imminent action. To fasten one around your shoulders is to say to the world: ‘Some pretty major scenes are about to go down. And make no mistake: I am ready.’ It’s a message that comes across regardless of whether the wearer is a warrior, a superhero, or Liberace. But how did capes come to be imbued with excitement and peril?”
The Biggest American Radio Star Most Americans Never Heard – And Perhaps The US’s Greatest Cultural Ambassador
“For 40 years, … [his broadcasts] constituted one of his country’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy.” He once said, “Jazz tells more about America than any American can realize. It bespeaks vitality, strength, social mobility; it’s a free music with its own discipline, but not an imposed, inhibiting discipline.”
Why Lonely People Can’t Just Buck Up And Make A Few Friends
“Lonely people do understand social skills, and often outperform the non-lonely when asked to demonstrate that understanding. It’s just that when they’re in situations when they need those skills the most, they choke.”